diff --git a/modules/ml/doc/mldata.rst b/modules/ml/doc/mldata.rst
index 5a3896c62..9b5e805e8 100644
--- a/modules/ml/doc/mldata.rst
+++ b/modules/ml/doc/mldata.rst
@@ -3,7 +3,7 @@ MLData
 
 .. highlight:: cpp
 
-For the machine learning algorithms, the data set is often stored in a file of the ``.csv``-like format. The file contains a table of predictor and response values where each row of the table corresponds to a sample. Missing values are supported. The UC Irvine Machine Learning Repository (http://archive.ics.uci.edu/ml/) provides many data sets stored in such a format to the machine learning community. The class ``MLData`` is implemented to easily load the data for training one of the OpenCV machine learning algorithms. For float values, only the  ``'.'`` separator is supported. The table can have a header and in such case the user have to set the number of the header lines to skip them duaring the file reading.
+For the machine learning algorithms, the data set is often stored in a file of the ``.csv``-like format. The file contains a table of predictor and response values where each row of the table corresponds to a sample. Missing values are supported. The UC Irvine Machine Learning Repository (http://archive.ics.uci.edu/ml/) provides many data sets stored in such a format to the machine learning community. The class ``MLData`` is implemented to easily load the data for training one of the OpenCV machine learning algorithms. For float values, only the  ``'.'`` separator is supported.
 
 CvMLData
 --------
@@ -182,20 +182,6 @@ Sets the variables types in the loaded data.
 
 In the string, a variable type is followed by a list of variables indices. For example: ``"ord[0-17],cat[18]"``, ``"ord[0,2,4,10-12], cat[1,3,5-9,13,14]"``, ``"cat"`` (all variables are categorical), ``"ord"`` (all variables are ordered). 
 
-CvMLData::get_header_lines_number
----------------------------------
-Returns a number of the table header lines. 
-
-.. ocv:function:: int CvMLData::get_header_lines_number() const
-    
-CvMLData::set_header_lines_number
----------------------------------
-Sets a number of the table header lines.
-
-.. ocv:function:: void CvMLData::set_header_lines_number( int n )
-
-By default it is supposed that the table does not have a header, i.e. it contains only the data.
-
 CvMLData::get_var_type
 ----------------------
 Returns type of the specified variable
diff --git a/modules/ml/include/opencv2/ml/ml.hpp b/modules/ml/include/opencv2/ml/ml.hpp
index 31ddaaa02..5179b937b 100644
--- a/modules/ml/include/opencv2/ml/ml.hpp
+++ b/modules/ml/include/opencv2/ml/ml.hpp
@@ -2026,9 +2026,6 @@ public:
     const CvMat* get_responses();
     const CvMat* get_missing() const;
 
-    void set_header_lines_number( int n );
-    int get_header_lines_number() const;
-
     void set_response_idx( int idx ); // old response become predictors, new response_idx = idx
                                       // if idx < 0 there will be no response
     int get_response_idx() const;
@@ -2069,7 +2066,6 @@ protected:
 
     char delimiter;
     char miss_ch;
-    short header_lines_number;
     //char flt_separator;
 
     CvMat* values;
@@ -2081,8 +2077,6 @@ protected:
     CvMat* var_idx_out; // mat
     CvMat* var_types_out; // mat
 
-    int header_lines_number;
-
     int response_idx;
 
     int train_sample_count;
diff --git a/modules/ml/src/data.cpp b/modules/ml/src/data.cpp
index 9894591e1..f143fdfe7 100644
--- a/modules/ml/src/data.cpp
+++ b/modules/ml/src/data.cpp
@@ -71,7 +71,6 @@ CvMLData::CvMLData()
 {
     values = missing = var_types = var_idx_mask = response_out = var_idx_out = var_types_out = 0;
     train_sample_idx = test_sample_idx = 0;
-	header_lines_number = 0;
     sample_idx = 0;
     response_idx = -1;
 
@@ -118,17 +117,6 @@ void CvMLData::clear()
     train_sample_count = -1;
 }
 
-
-void CvMLData::set_header_lines_number( int idx )
-{
-	header_lines_number = (short)std::max(0, idx);
-}
-
-int CvMLData::get_header_lines_number() const
-{
-	return header_lines_number;
-}
-
 static char *fgets_chomp(char *str, int n, FILE *stream)
 {
 	char *head = fgets(str, n, stream);
@@ -165,15 +153,9 @@ int CvMLData::read_csv(const char* filename)
     if( !file )
         return -1;
 
-	std::vector<char> _buf(M);
+    // read the first line and determine the number of variables
+    std::vector<char> _buf(M);
     char* buf = &_buf[0];
-    
-	// skip header lines
-	for( int i = 0; i < header_lines_number; i++ )
-		if( fgets( buf, M, file ) == 0 )
-			return -1;
-
-    // read the first data line and determine the number of variables
     if( !fgets_chomp( buf, M, file ))
     {
         fclose(file);